Column: One Boston CEO's FOMO RTO strategy: Ross Kerber

Perpetual

22/01/2025 13:00

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a
columnist for Reuters. This column is part of the weekly Reuters
Sustainable Finance newsletter, which you can sign up for here https://www.reuters.com/newsletters/reuters-sustainable-finance/)

        * 
      Hybrid work improves retention without hurting
productivity,
says Stanford's Bloom
    

        * 
      JPMorgan and Amazon mandate full office return, sparking
complaints. Trump follows suit
    

  
    By Ross Kerber
       BOSTON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - While leaders from the White
House to Wall Street order workers back into their offices, one
Boston CEO uses carrots rather than sticks to lure his employees
to work.
Trillium Asset Management CEO Matthew Patsky summarizes the
strategy as "creating a fear of missing out" for employees who
stay home. He wants colleagues to interact and to "leave people
feeling like, oh, I really want to be in.”
The head of the $5.1 billion asset manager spoke as he gave me a
tour of the firm's offices on the 31st floor of a brand-new
skyscraper in downtown Boston, with stunning views over the
Charles River. It was a chilly  Thursday afternoon and around
three-quarters of Trillium's 36 locally based employees had
shown up, a typical midweek turnout though it still left the
company's 20,000+ square feet of office space feeling airy.
Since moving into the space last April, Patsky said the firm has
held frequent events like drinks, book signings and staff
birthdays, plus lunches with representatives of partner
organizations and a Tuesday investment-committee meeting. All
prompt the typical Trillium employee to come in some 2.5 days a
week even though the firm has no set requirement.
    Patsky says he has no simple way to track employees'
productivity, and that he has good workers who are fully remote.
    "We all remember, those of us who have been in the business
long enough, the concern that people will slack off if they're
working from home. But that didn't prove to be true," he said.
    Trillium may not be the best role model for every company,
as a sustainability-focused firm in a wealthy city and a unit of
Australia's Perpetual.  PPT.AX  
State Street Corp  STT.N , which occupies 500,000 square feet of
the same building at One Congress Street, has a
four-days-in-the-office mandate.
But Patsky's approach ticks a lot of boxes about what employees
want: 50% of workers would prefer some kind of hybrid work
arrangement, said Stanford University Economics Professor
Nicholas Bloom, who studies the topic. In a recent paper he
found work-from-home policies improved employee retention
without hurting productivity.
    Survey data Bloom sent me shows work from home stabilizing
around 25% of workers' days since 2023. Not everyone gets that
choice: 62% of U.S. workers are fully on-site, including the
front-line employees who are lower-paid. Meanwhile the 25% of
workers with hybrid jobs tend to be professionals and managers
who make more money.
     
    BACK TO FIVE DAYS A WEEK
This month JPMorgan  JPM.N  told hybrid employees to come back
to the office five days a week, as did Amazon.com  AMZN.O  in
September, in both cases prompting employee complaints.
Then on Monday President Donald Trump told U.S. federal workers
to return to the office five days a week, at the same time
weakening job protections for civil servants. Unlike some
statements from private sector companies, Trump's allies said
the moves are "intended to help the president replace
long-serving government workers with loyalists faithful only to
his agenda," wrote my colleague Raphael Satter in his coverage.
    Bloom, the economist, said the end of federal hybrid work
policies may boost quit rates by a third. A challenge will be
that those with the most in-demand skills will be first to
leave, such as the information technology staff who run
government websites.
    Whatever those sites' problems now, "just wait until 2027
when half the IT staff have gone," Bloom said.

 (Reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio)
 ((mailto:ross.kerber@thomsonreuters.com; (617) 412 0093;))